More science please!

It's a busy season. Spring is springing with hot ferocity and I am back to giving speeches and consults about The Future, sometimes boarding airplanes and others via video. Including a coming meeting of NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).

Which brings us around to science. Yes, amind ructions of war and insurrection and treason against an Enlightenment Experiment that gave us just about everything we have... it's good to pause, now and then, and realize just how fantastic and wonderful this experiment in reason and equality and reasonableness and acceptance of facts has been to us.

YOU are a member of the first civilization that ever did any of the stuff you are about to read about, below. If you quiver with failure of confidence -- or feel tempted by yammerers of gloom -- remember that's what enemies of the Enlightenment want. Snap out of it!

We're wonderful. And we can solve this. Read examples of just how wonderful we are. Starting now.

==A Brighter Future ==

For starters, some fun. As a reminder that the future might… maybe… be better, see again the wonderful Arconic advert using The Jetsons.

And that optimistic future is possible, ironically more than ever in these dolorous and insipidly pessimistic times, as solutions keep rising…. if only we can gather the collective and individual will to use them. As described in Peter Diamandis’s book Abundance; The Future is Better Than You Think. Take this very recent example from Peter’s newsletter:

“This past year, the world’s biggest jeweler Pandora announced it will cease to sell all mined diamonds (which are scarce and fraught with environmental and human rights abuses), and switch exclusively to selling lab-made diamonds, which can be abundant and low cost—produced from water, methane, and electricity.” 

There are few oligarchic-monopolistic conspiracies more evil than the DeBeers diamond cartel. So this is potentially great news, brought to you by advancing technology.

Though Peter starts with the story of aluminum.

== Capsule Updates in Physics ==

From Scientific American: "In a first, scientists have measured the curvature of Spacetime, " revealing subtle changes in gravity's strength. 

Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challenge because of the high speeds at which light waves oscillates. Current methods can clock electric fields at up to gigahertz frequencies— radio frequency and microwave spectra. A Florida research team has developed the world's first optical oscilloscope:  "Our optical oscilloscope may be able to increase that speed by a factor of about 10,000." Most earlier methods relied upon interference of waves. Could this be important? Are you kidding?

An amazing helium airship that alternates life as dirigible or water ship. Alas, it is missing some important aspects I could explain… As shown in EXISTENCE.

And the latest ‘flying car” is actually a road-ready flying car.  And yes, I have LONG predicted 2024 as the Year of the Flying Car. Well, for the rich. Along certain licensed limo routes. But yeah.

== Paleontology and Archaeology ==

The dinosaurs' last season: Apparently we can now tell pretty precisely when the dinosaur-killing comet or asteroid struck. Not the exact year, but pretty much the exact month! “And it’s looking like life on Earth had a really, really bad June.”

And...? Wonderful finds at Tanis, in the Dakotas, show many creatures exceptionally well-preserved who seem to have died suddenly the very day that asteroid ended the era of the dinosaurs. I look forward to the show! Dinosaurs: The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough will be broadcast on BBC One on 15 April at 18:30 BST. A version has been made for the US science series Nova on the PBS network to be broadcast later in the year.

The oldest human family tree – almost 6000 years old – has been reconstructed from genetic analysis of the occupants of a cairn-tomb in England. Researchers discovered that most of those buried in the tomb were descended from four women who had children with the same man. And so, likely, are many of us.

A recent update on the fascinating Antikythera device.

Helping historians fill in the blanks: DeepMind's new AI helps restore damaged ancient texts and inscriptions, whether written on papyrus, stone, or pottery.

Interesting science on the genes of ancient Egyptians; it will not be welcome in some quarters. They found that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant.

And related to archaeology… alas… “Japan is scrapping their model 700 Shinkansen Bullet Trains that blow away all passenger trains in our entire country! They’re getting scrapped at Hakata Minami depot and replaced by newer N700A and the latest N700S models. And yes, one can imagine the blowback of ‘national shame(!) if the U.S. or just California were to purchase the old ones, with some refurbishment! 

But here are answers! (1) The deal could include licenses to produce newer models here. But more important: (2) “By installing these proved and utterly safe trains now, we can invest heavily in leapfrogging to the next level. And you need an existing ‘frog’ to leap over!” And finally: (3) Once these are running, millions will say “Oh! I didn’t get it, before. Now I can’t imagine life without these trains.” 

== Business also matters… ==

Steve Jobs said Xerox could have owned computer industry.  A great man (modest too.) and a great loss.  But Xerox was not the worst example, nor Boeing nor Kodak. Want the biggest fail of all? In 1993 - the year that the Mosaic web browser came out and a year before the Bezos family started selling books online - SEARS shut down their established, 150 year mail order catalogue. Yes, that very year. I am sure at some meeting some guy mentioned this Internet thing and was laughed out of the room… even though at the time Sears was a 50% owner of Prodigy, with IBM!

By now Sears would have owned the world. 

Is there a solution to this kind of myopia, that has shrunk the "ROI horizon" of most businesses from 7 years to 3 months, amid a tsunami of criminal 'stock buybacks' that the Greatest Generation wisely banned?

Easy peasy solution. Every undergrad and most grad business majors should be shut down at once. Then allow MBA programs only for those who can show they spent 5 years making a product or delivering a service. And force a harshly winnowed Boeing corporate staff to move back to Seattle.

This is an amazing five-minute video with Steve Jobs--from 1995. The power of visionaries (and competition and innovation and empathy). Read the excellent biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Amazing how he was a very modest fellow.

== Reflections ==

Noted futurist John Smart has finally finished Book 1 of his two book series, The Foresight Guide, which shows how – philosophically and effectively – one can argue for a universe that propels sapient civilizations toward development and light. A passionately intelligent argument for optimism.

A terrific video about the Antikythera device. Alas, like every other discussion of ancient wonders and technologies, not one person discussed the real question... which is why such marvelous methods were lost! 

You know my answer. Secrecy.

There’s a mythology that all the tricks of construction used in the Parthenon were cleverly calculated de novo, when in fact it benefitted from lessons learned across 300 years of lesser works. Likewise, the Antikythera machine blatantly was not the first. There had to have been at least a century of buildup and trials and we never heard of it because of … you know.

== H. G. Welles on… E.T. ==

“We can conceive vaguely of silicon playing the part of carbon, sulphur taking on the role of oxygen, and so forth, in compounds which, at a different tempo under pressures and temperatures beyond our earthly ken, may sustain processes of movement and metabolism with the accompaniment of some sort of consciousness, and even of individuation and reproduction. We can play with such ideas and evoke if we like a Gamma life, a Delta life, and so on through the whole Greek alphabet. 

"We can guess indeed at subconscious and superconscious aspects to every material phenomenon. But all such exercises strain the meaning of the word life towards the breaking-point, and we glance at them only to explain that here we restrict our use of the word life to its common everyday significance of the individualized, reproductive, spontaneously, stirring and metabolic beings about us.”

So said the mighty co-inventor of science fiction, almost a century ago. A fascinating read, as he spoke of the ‘likelihood’ of oceans on Venus and canals on Mars. Yet, he also quotes a noted astronomer’s opinion that star-warmed ocean-bearing worlds must be rare in the cosmos.

Well, at the time, James Jeans and others deemed planets to be rare, making the chances for life limited. (That us the core premise behind E.E. Doc Smith's Lensmen saga.) We now know better. Still, as Wells put it…

“It is limited as yet, but it is still premature of us to define its final limitations. It seems that life must once have begun, but no properly informed man can say with absolute conviction that it will ever end.”

Excepted from: The Science of Life, H.G. Wells, Julian S. Huxley, G. P. Wells, 1929

== A contest re the Fermi Paradox! ==

Finally....  So how many various ‘answers’ to the Question of the Great Silence – or Fermi Paradox – have appeared in music? And sure, in film?

One of you (Talin) suggested a contest  for folks to chime in – under comments. 

Examples:

-  David Bowie has one ("He'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds")

- The Carpenters ("Calling occupants of interplanetary craft")

- Jefferson Starship's fun and inventive... but ultimately very nasty and churlish... song “Hijack.”

- Hank Green: "Fermi Paradox."

Have fun in our lively comment community, below, taking a break from international madness.

War & (long-term) Peace: Contemplating historical perspectives

The past dominates our thoughts and imaginations, even as we veer away from truly looking at its lessons, let alonge speculate uncomfortably about the future. Well, except in cogent science fiction. And even then, how to tell which projections are accurate?

Naturally, this applies to current events... we'll apply the question to the Ukraine War as well as World War II, below. But first...

The Future of Man: Take this rumination by Bertrand Russell in 1951, on the three possible futures he could conceive. “Before the end of the present century, unless something quite unforeseeable occurs, one of three possibilities will have been realized. I do not pretend to know which of these will happen, or even which is the most likely. What I do contend is that the kind of system to which we have been accustomed cannot possibly continue. These three are: 

1. The end of human life, perhaps of all life on our planet.

2. A reversion to barbarism after a catastrophic diminution of the population of the globe.

3. A unification of the world under a single government, possessing a monopoly of all the major weapons of war.”

Of course, we read these words more than two decades after his deadline, and none of the three has happened. One could berate Russell for the myopia of urgency that also led (that same year) to dire-warnings like the film The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Further, Russell wrote:

“If things are allowed to drift, it is obvious that the bickering between Russia and the Western democracies will continue until Russia has a considerable store of atomic bombs, and that when that time comes there will be an atomic war. In such a war, even if the worst consequences are avoided, Western Europe, including Great Britain, will be virtually exterminated. If America and the U.S.S.R. survive as organized states, they will presently fight again. If one side is victorious, it will rule the world, and a unitary government of mankind will have come into existence; if not, either mankind or, at least, civilization will perish. This is what must happen if nations and their rulers are lacking in constructive vision.”

I remain astonished by the pertinence of a brilliant thinker who – while correct in his general appraisals, was (fortunately) wrong in the very-widely-shared gloom of his assessment of our civilization’s future.

Wrong, that is, up until now? Having said that, I remain daunted by how almost everything Russell said in 1951 about his future could now be said about the tomorrows that we face, looking ahead.  Go ahead and read the essay, squinting and updating by 70 years, replacing some of the players and inserting ecological catastrophe to loom alongside the spectre of nuclear Armageddon. And an America-led enlightenment whose well-earned confidence has been shattered by a deliberately-instigated spate of wholly unnecessary internal civil war. 

To all of the oligarchies now united in desperate urgency to bring down this Periclean experiment, I will further quote Bertrand Russell from 1951:

“Only democracy and free publicity can prevent the holders of power from establishing a servile state, with luxury for the few and overworked poverty for the many. This is what is being done by the Soviet government wherever it is in secure control. There are, of course, economic inequalities everywhere, but in a democratic regime they tend to diminish, whereas under an oligarchy they tend to increase. And wherever an oligarchy has power, economic inequalities threaten to become permanent owing to the modern impossibility of successful rebellion.”

George Orwell surely must have read this essay before writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, wherein he portray's the oligarchs ruling Oceania doing this. The essay will likely shock you in some ways, especially in its militancy, given that Russell would later tout pacifism and denounce US errors in Vietnam. I know I blinked in surprise at a number of paragraphs!

As prediction, the essay failed, in ways that turned out to be fortunate. But as an exploration, it will make you rethink some of the crucial factors that are even more redolent than they were in the year that I first looked out upon the world.

It is in this context we must recognize that oligarchy - the ruling pattern in 99.99% of human societies across 6000 years - has had to concoct fresh tactics to counter the blazing, brilliant strengths and creative fecundity of democratic enlightenment, inciting our own virtues - like individualism and suspicion of authority - to divide and disrupt us.

Russell concludes his essay: "There is hope that law, rather than private force, may come to govern the relations of nations within the present century. If this hope is not realized we face utter disaster; if it is realized, the world will be far better than at any previous period in the history of man."

== Looking back to World War II ==

While sane and decent people are deeply moved and enraged by the criminal horrors of the invasion of Ukraine - and encouraged by not only the courageous defenders but also the obstinate stupidity of the invaders (more on that, below) - I am further prompted to comment on the struggle that shaped the modern world and gave the Enlightenment one more, last-best chance. 

For example it was 80 years ago, yesterday, that the USS Hornet sailed through fog under the Golden Gate Bridge laden with B25 bombers on a rendezvous - 2 weeks later - with destiny. An innovation that changed history and whose 'mother' was necessity born of innovative duplicity at Pearl Harbor.

I also read more about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where my uncle (later professor at UIUC) Victor Stone commanded a set of landing craft. And I re-evaluated my opinion of Admiral Kurita - blamed for a Halsey-level flub in not pressing his attack after a hellish encounter with a small US force called Taffy 3. I've realized that blaming Kurita is simply wrong! During that 90 minute tussle, the IJN commander realized a simple truth - that the USN of October 1944 was not even remotely the same force that had been crushed at Pearl Harbor, in December 1941. Not by decades or even generations. Just as Imperial air power was annihilated a few months earlier, in the Philippine Sea, and as the IJN southern and northern forces were pulverized with ease that same day, Kurita’s Central Force faced skills, ships and technologies against which they never stood a chance. 

Consider that the totally surprised and unprepared Taffy Three - 6 tiny escort carriers with 3 destroyers and 4 destroyer escorts - applied 5-inch pea shooters and (with help from a couple of torpedoes) wrecked or sank four IJN heavy cruisers. Read that again. Radar control, gunnery stabilizers, terrific damage control and - oh yes - incredible courage and skill made the sacrifices of those tiny ships into a lopsided victory that left Kurita staring in astonishment as his flagship, mighty Yamato, veered wildly to evade other torpedoes…

… and 400+ aircraft equipped only for supporting ground troops, but whose bombs and strafings turned the superstructures of three IJN battleships into confusion and chaos.

Kurita’s later apologia claimed he had intel about more vulnerable US carriers to the north and he did spend a few minutes charging after that ghost target, before calling it a day. But even if he had continued south, chasing after my uncle and the fleeing transports, he’d only have met 14 more destroyers, who were preparing to charge in (again perhaps suicidally) and damage his force enough to make it easy prey for Adm. Oldendorf’s six older battleships, rushing north from their victory in Surigao Strait…. and then 5 newer ones hurrying south from Halsey’s Mistake.

I have a habit of re-evaluating earlier opinions, like coming around to realizing that the Battle of Gettysburg was never in doubt and never even close. And thinking maybe that a statue of Benedict Arnold wouldn’t be so inappropriate, after all. (Ask in comments!)

In this case, I have come to conclude that even with Halsery's entire 3rd fleet off chasing potemkin distractions, just Taffy 3 alone showed what a supremely competent buzz saw the USN had become, in just 2.5 years. And so, I have total sympathy for Takeo Kurita. The IJN was already finished. But at least his retreat meant a few of his sailors made it home to their families. And so did the crews of those 14 fresh U.S. destroyers, And so did Victor Stone.

== So many lessons from Ukraine ==

We are likewise behooved to learn from more recent events. Take this anecdote from one of the best members of an under-ratedly brilliant clade, retirees of the US military officer corps, Gen. Wesley Clark.

General Clark recalled teaching a class of Ukrainian generals in 2016 in Kyiv and trying to explain what an American military “after-action review” was. He told them that after a battle involving American troops, “everybody got together and broke down what happened.”

“The colonel has to confess his mistakes in front of the captain,” General Clark said. “He says, ‘Maybe I took too long to give an order.’”

After hearing him out, the Ukrainians, General Clark said, told him that could not work. “They said, ‘We’ve been taught in the Soviet system that information has to be guarded and we lie to each other,’” he recalled.

To which one could cynically reply that there is still plenty of butt-covering in the US military! Of course there is. Ass-covering and delusion-protection are core human nature attributes, perhaps THE core attributes responsible for the litany of horrors we call ‘history.’ 

After almost any war (including 'wars' between companies in the marketplace or between theories in science), the victors prepare for the same kind of war they just won, while the losers try to innovate. Hence, Russians rebuild what they think enabled them to crush Army Group Center in 1944, while Ukrainians had to re-adjust and listen to guys like Clark.

The biggest exceptions to that 'only losers innovate' rule? European observers watching the US Civil War went home appalled and demanded top-to-bottom changes. Except the French, who soon were smashed. by the Prussians.

But the biggest was George Marshall in 1945 asking: “What mistakes do empires always make?” And red-team critiquing became part of US military culture. Enough to maybe half compensate for inevitable human delusion. (The same question about mistakes of all previous empires led to US counter-mercantilist trade policies that for 75 years have uplifted poor nations all over the world, though some ingrates yowl "we did it all ourselves!")

The crux? We see today that teachings about flexibility by guys like Wesley Clark must have been heeded by those Ukrainian students, whose battlefield innovations - with some help - have turned a terrible and toxic tide.

Stay tuned to reality. Have we any other choice?

Science & Tech updates and incredible marvels!

Taking another break from war, pandemic & politics. Though again I think our paladins in all of those realms could benefit from my book of fresh tactics, Polemical Judo... 

== Wow, just wow ==

The eeriest news during an eerie month? Was the 1983 Christopher Walken film Brainstorm prophetic? According to a recent report: “After an elderly patient died suddenly during a routine test, scientists accidentally captured unique data on the activity in his brain at the very end of his life: During the 30 seconds before and after the man's heart stopped, his brain waves were remarkably similar to those seen during dreaming, memory recall and meditation, suggesting that people may actually see their life "flash before their eyes" when they die.”

And fantastic! A team has found the wreck of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance more than 100 years after the vessel was crushed by ice and sank near Antarctica. One of my lifelong heroes.

== Our biological world ==

While I prepare to restore my pastime as a honey beekeeper, it is a good idea to remember that there are other, important kinds of buzzers out there, including the humble (and endangered!) bumble bee! 

Homes for bees: Bee bricks: In southern England, a new law calls for new-building construction to include special bricks designed for bee nests. Not honeybees but native stingless kinds that also are needed.

Expanding our definition of food: Lobster, once despised, is now a delicacy. The same could happen with insects, this video argues. Useful for space colonies as well.

 A bacterium single cell is visible to the naked eye, growing up to 2 centimeters and 5000 times bigger than most other microbes. ‘What’s more, this giant has a huge genome that’s not free floating inside the cell as in other bacteria, but is instead encased in a membrane, an innovation characteristic of much more complex eukaryotes.’ 

At a recent (zoomed) CARTA conference, Mark Moffett of the Smithsonian gave a talk: “Ants and the Anthropocene” that suggests humans aren’t the only species who are aggressively altering the planet. Kneel down anywhere in California or the south of France or a hundred other places and you’ll see Argentine ants (AA) who hitchhiked on human transports, then expanded to extinguish almost all native ant species, in part by making super-colonies who cooperate in taking over the land. Fire ants, who have done the same thing in the US south, coincidentally come from the same Argentine flood basin! They became so ferocious amid millennia of fights in one spot, And now the battle of two rival species is worldwide, including fire ant infestations in California. There are some exceptions to Argentine ants’ super cooperation. California actually has five super colonies and they battle incessantly, with one boundary just a few klicks from our home!

Might a solution be as simple as a virus that changes and randomizes the scent signatures of these super colonies?

== Ah, Covid ==

Despite so many deaths (almost a million in the U.S. alone), this pandemic was mild by sci fi standards, and may be looked back-upon as more of a live fire 'drill' that left us better prepared for the real thing. The stunning speed with which half a dozen different vaccines came forth must be daunting to any villains out there, planning bio-war. Indeed, the U.S. Army's entirely new vaccine may be the future. Apparently it offers 12 sites to attach any antigen stimulant you want. And thus could simultaneously immunize vs, all known coronas, including those responsible for half of all common colds.

Oh, and the pandemic also made clear which of our neighbors are stark-jibbering-loony science-hating cultists. Our earlier notion that they can be talked into reason was revealed as a mad delusion, in its own right. Though I believe there are polemical tactics that could peel away just enough to make a gig difference, this November.

== Insights into humanity ==

Scientists have gained new glimpses into how our brains lay down memories - which could shed light on memory disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. 

Researchers have calculated that lead exposure from car exhaust shrank the IQ scores of half of the American population. But it would have been far worse, except for the campaign circa 1970 to overcome massive trog resistance and ban lead from most gas. I was involved. 

Superdeterminism? Does quantum mechanics rule out free will? 

Wow. A unified genealogy of modern and ancient genomes: “We present a unified tree sequence of 3601 modern and eight high-coverage ancient human genome sequences compiled from eight datasets. This structure is a lossless and compact representation of 27 million ancestral haplotype fragments and 231 million ancestral lineages linking genomes from these datasets back in time.”

Why do we age? Robert Lustig’s list of aging processes that take place at a cellular level includes: glycation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction,, insulin resistance, membrane instability, inflammation, methylation, and autophagy.

More than 350 blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, experienced a miracle of partly restored vision, only to now find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget that (unsupported by the now bankrupt company) may fail at any moment. “Neural implants—devices that interact with the human nervous system, either on its periphery or in the brain—are part of a rapidly growing category of medicine that’s sometimes called electroceuticals. Some technologies are well established, like deep-brain stimulators that reduce tremors in people with Parkinson’s disease. But recent advances in neuroscience and digital technology have sparked a gold rush in brain tech, with the outsized investments epitomized by Elon Musk’s buzzy brain-implant company, Neuralink. Some companies talk of reversing depression, treating Alzheimer’s disease, restoring mobility, or even dangle the promise of superhuman cognition.”

== It’s a virus! ==

One-fifth. Nearly 20% of cancers worldwide are caused by a virus. These viruses don’t cause cancer until long after they initially infect a person. Rather, the viruses teach the cells they take over how to escape the natural biological process of cell death. This strategy sets these altered cells on a path for other genetic changes that can cause full-blown cancer years down the road..All known viruses can be categorized into one of 22 distinct families. Five of these families are called “persisting,” because once a person is infected, the virus remains in their body for life. One example is the herpes virus that causes chickenpox in children and can reappear later in life as shingles. This ability to survive over the long term helps the virus spread from person to person.

There are seven known viruses that can cause cancer. Five of them are members of persistent virus families. The human papillomavirus, commonly known as HPV and known to cause cervical cancer, is in the papilloma family. The Epstein-Barr virus, which causes Hodgkin lymphomas, and the Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated virus, are both in the herpes family. The human T-lymphotropic virus, which can cause a type of leukemia, is what’s known as a retrovirus. And Merkel cell polyoma virus, which causes Merkel cell carcinoma, is in the polyoma family.  All five of these viruses contain genetic code for one or more proteins that teach cells how to avoid cell death, effectively immortalizing them and promoting cell growth. The cancer cells that develop from these oncogenic viruses all contain their original viruses’ genetic information, even when they appear years after the initial infection.

And if all of that sounds familiar to some of you who have read my story “Chrysalis” in my Best of Brin short story collection, well, I only predict the future, I don’t make it happen.

All of which… plus Covid… reminds me to periodically offer up this song from 1979’s Unpacking the Eighties (on NPR).

IT’S A VIRUS*

Back in the Pleistocene,
When we were still marine,
a virus launched a quest,
to be the perfect guest 
And re-arranged our genes.

So to this very day,
Whether you grok or pray
all your inheritors
count on those visitors
And what they make you pay.

REFRAIN

It’s a virus,
It inspired us,
to rise above the mud.
It’s a virus,
It’s desirous,
of your very flesh and blood.

Now I know your body’s burning,
But don’t give up the ghost.
Tiny viruses are turning you
Into the perfect... host.

(More verses in comments ... and yes, I made up one of the verses, myself.)

== And is anything blurry, yet? ==

Finally.... Is anyone interested in reviewing an advanced copy of a book about how our human senses change as we age? By an old college chum of mine. See 1st comment, below.

It’s primary season. There’s a trick to multiply your citizen-influence.

I have (with others) inveighed mightily against the cheats that have come close to ruining American democracy. For example, elsewhere I oft claim blackmail is the sole plausible explanation for the behavior of so many in Washington DC. I recommend easy ways to find out if I’m right.  

Even worse is gerrymandering, abetted by the wholly-treasonous Roberts Doctrine, that has warped US politics, shifting power from the General Election to primaries, where radicals exert vastly amplified influence.

See “Radicalization by primary has driven the GOP mad.” Though - at risk of being accused of ‘both-side-ism’ - the same thing has happened (to a lesser degree) on the U.S. left. 

In a hurry to learn the ‘trick’ to amplify your vote-power? 

Then skim down past the following explanations, to the *** part...

... where I describe a practical way that YOU… and maybe 50 million Americans … might restore your sovereign power as a citizen.

 == Why do I keep trying? == 

My own past efforts to urge judo tactics on our ‘generals’ leading the Union side in this phase of U.S. Civil War include a book — Polemical Judo -- containing almost a hundred agile tactics to break a gone-mad Republican Party’s hold on many institutions, states and 40% of our neighbors... asking: “Have you noticed a path past those trenches and around that mountain?” 

Alas, among political castes and pundits — even good guys! — new ideas and methods are not-welcome. Oh, there are paladins like AOC, Stacey Abrams and DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, who must spend inordinate time corralling flakes eager to repeat their betrayals of 80, 88, 94, 2000, 2010 and 2016, spurning the only coalition that stands any chance of stopping the forces of darkness. See Five devastating rebuttals to use those who would split our coalition.

If November 2020 was our Gettysburg, turning the tide from Trumpism, science-hating idiocracy and treason, remember that it took another 20 months from Gettysburg to Appomattox and America’s rebirth of freedom.

So here’s my top suggestion for how citizens like you might help fight the wave of Holnists trying to wreck our Great Experiment.

== The essence of this crime ==

The Roberts majority on the Supreme Court has one mission, above all. Not abortion or corporatism, but to preserve gerrymandering - the sole thing keeping the GOP relevant in the House and in state legislatures. Without it, there might still be a Republican power in the U.S. Senate. But the party would collapse almost everywhere else.

Crucially, gerrymandering lets politicians choose the voters, instead of voters choosing politicians. It creates mostly ‘safe” districts in which the General Election is a farce. 

The only balloting most reps and assembly members fear is their party’s primary, explaining much of today’s riled-up radicalism of U.S. politics. See how the New York Times made a game to help you understand it. 

And the sole top priority of John Roberts is to protect this situation.

Do you live in such a district, frustrated that you will never, ever get to help elect someone you like, or thwart representatives you despise?  Then skip ahead to the next section ***

Only first… how does this foul cheat endure, in the face of a vast American consensus against it? John Roberts even admitted that it’s loathsome and inherently wrong. In order to protect it, he concocted the Roberts Doctrine, that the U.S. Supreme Court has no business ruling on the processes and procedures adopted by sovereign state legislatures. Not even when they are cheating voters in order to maintain power that large majorities want to take away from them!

Of course this ploy is an absolutely stunning sham! Since the Supreme Court has intervened countless times in such matters. In fact, Roberts avows that Congress could overcome gerrymandering, if it chooses, via the Voting Rights Act. Hence, a top priority of McConnell & co. has been to stymie that.

In defense of his Doctrine, the Chief Justice contrived an even more amazing rationalization — that while gerrymandering is ‘regrettable,’ alas ‘no remedy” had been presented without flaws of its own.  

Okay, sure, giving the job of forging fair districts to a neutral commission can pose problems too, maybe 1% as bad as letting legislatures do it!  But… what if Biden sent the Solicitor General back before the Court with a fresh approach? One that cancels all of JR’s rationalized excuses? 

If you're curious, see the Minimal Overlap Solution that I offered in Polemical Judo, and summarized here.

There is pushback against gerrymandering! Barack Obama is trying to persuade Democrats in Illinois and Maryland to join a swell of fellow blue states in banishing gerrymandering, even if that would briefly disadvantage a few local, DP politicians. The nasty cheat would hence become a universally Republican crime. The same way that blue states have been leading the way out of the thrice-damned Drug War. The fight continues at many levels, with GOP led state legislatures (as in Texas and Ohio) aggressively applying the Roberts doctrine, using power gained by theft and cheating to empower themselves to cheat and steal more.

Late news:  A state court in Maryland has struck down the Democratic-drawn congressional map as an illegal partisan gerrymander, ordering the state legislature to redraw the lines for the 2022 election.  Of course! These MD judges were Democrat-appointed and hence professionals, not hired shills. Any sane jurist would rule against this cheat, even by his or her own party.

Alas, some of the same lawyers are blocking reforms of gerrymandering in Texas.

Reforming this travesty through normal processes will take forever. And hence my key point. You don’t have to wait for politicians to solve this!  

== To hell with labels! Register in the party OF your district! ==

All right, that was a lot of hot air. Lots of words and tl:dr details. 

“Will you finally get to the point, Brin? 

How can I get my voting power back, 

even if I live in a gerrymandered district?”

*** Okay here's the fundamental: 

IN GERRIED DISTRICTS IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PRIMARY, STUPID!

Consider: Gerrymandering lumps birds-of-a-feather till each district is “owned” by one party or another. Democratic voters in a Republican-owned district – or Republicans in a Democratic-owned district – will never cast a legislature vote in the only election that matters: the majority party’s primary.

Unless… you hold your nose and re-register with whatever party owns your district.

This holds true whether you’re a Democrat in a Republican district, or vice versa.

If your district is gerried to contain mostly Republicans, then maybe it should be represented by a conservative person! 

But, as a district resident, you deserve to have some say in which variant of conservative it will be! 

 - A Tea Party radical? 

 - A slavish oligarchy-servant, or Nazi, or Roy Moore-style pederast? 

 - Or else perhaps a genteel negotiator, like a Goldwater or Buckley? Such a person may not be the AOC-type you'd prefer. But sanity counts! As does a willingness to negotiate. And to be fed up with Trumpism.

Conservative radicals will scream if they detect former Democrats or Independents doing this! Non Trumpites who attempt this kind of judo must be aiming to sabotage the Republican primary! But any large numbers who switch will have one goal: to recover a meaningful say in a district that had disenfranchised them. 

 - To vote in the only election that matters.

 - To vote for candidates they disagree with less – or who at least aren’t perverts or crooks. 

 - That's a reasonable criterion.

Would it stick in your gorge to register Republican?  

(Or would it gall a conservative in Ilhan Omar’s district to register Democrat?) 

Does a label change your principles? 

Remember Republicans of yore – Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower – and sign the damn card! 

In fact, this tactic has a century of precedents – generations of Republicans registered as Democrats in the old-time “solid south,” for exactly this reason: to vote in the only election that mattered, the Democratic Party’s primary! 

They can hardly complain now.

== RECLAIM YOUR SOVEREIGNTY ==

Picture the majority party primary in each gerrymandered district becoming the de facto general election, with all voters participating. Screamers and radicals would lose potency. Representatives could no longer pick which citizens to ignore by their party registration. 

Moreover, if enough Democrats and independents re-register as Republicans, it will screw up their calculations, their polls, and the data they use to gerrymander! That, alone, will be citizen revenge upon a cynical political caste. 

And it has no effect on your freedom to choose in the general election.

Can’t stomach registering as a (pick your poison) Democrat/Republican? Get over it! Partisan labels made this mess. Grin at your friends’ shocked reactions. 

Then recruit them, rebelling against a political scam. 

If fifty million Americans do this, we’ll show the politicians: “you can’t take us for granted, nor fool all the people, all the time.”

== Finally: This sort of trick should not be necessary! ==

I did this in California, back when we had classic primaries-by-party. Then, in a terrific reform pushed by the Berggruen Institute and others, CA voters establish the best electoral process in the nation, turning to a universal-open primary that's in-effect a first round general election, so that in November the top-two vote-getters face each other.

 It is in fact a crude version of preferential or rank choice balloting, which is starting to gain traction in some places. Positive effects abound, including a decline in primary-driven radicalism and an unexpected empowerment of minority party voters in many districts.

But that's a discussion for our lively comment section, below.

======

Notes:

[1] In some states (AL being one) you don’t have to register a party affiliation to vote in their primary! Just tell them you want the other party’s ballot. It does mean you have to stay in the same "lane" in any runoffs, of course. But it also means you can influence the real election, without having to actually join a party you detest! 

 

LATE NEWS: The Supreme Court stays out of key state rulings on partisan gerrymandering, for now.  Within the last month, state courts in both North Carolina and Pennsylvania drew new congressional district maps after finding that their state legislatures failed to adopt plans that met state constitutional and statutory requirements. Republican-aligned groups then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the state court decisions and adopt a newly advanced — and some say radical — theory that would bar state supreme courts from ruling on election disputes involving federal offices.

On Monday, the court declined both of those challenges, a relief to voting rights advocates but likely only a temporary reprieve, as four of the court's conservative justices indicated their desire to intervene.